The present invention relates to a rotary pine cone gathering device and a method of manufacturing the device. In particular, a rotary pine cone gathering device is constructed having a wire basket with loose rotatable coverings over the wires or sets of wires for gathering pine cones or other objects lying on the ground.
The primary purpose of this invention is to provide homeowners with an option for gathering pine cones without stooping and having to gather them by hand. While hand operated wire basket gathering devices are well known for manually harvesting nuts, such wire basket harvesting devices include narrow steel wires or cages that are not effective for gathering fragile and large options such as pine cones. Thus, wire basket nut harvesters have been avoided as far as gathering pine cones has been concerned. Finding a device for more effectively gathering pine cones is particularly important to our senior citizens who are often interested in gardening and landscaping.
Manually operated pine cone gathering devices help individuals gather pine cones while standing erect and gather more than one could gather without such tools. Previously existing hand operated gathering devices have been either inefficient or cost prohibitive to manufacture, or both; as a result, an ongoing need exists for improved pine cone gathering devices.
For example U.S. Pat. No. 5,168,692 to Dudley discloses a rolling nut harvesting apparatus that may also collect pine cones. The Dudley device includes a complex basket and hopper; this complex device is not cost effective to construct and less attractive to offer the general consumer as compared with the present invention. The present invention offers an elegant solution for collection and storage of pine cones in a single chamber that is simple to manufacture and cost effective.
In another example of a prior pine cone retrieving device, U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,701 to Glass teaches a relatively more cost effective and simpler device than Dudley provided in the example above. The Glass device comprises an array of three flexible elongated tines. The tines taught by Glass converge to retrieve one pine cone at a time and may hold a few pine cones before requiring removal of the pine cones from the tines. The Glass device, while simple, is limited by speed of use, and does not include an efficient means for storing pine cones while at the same time gathering.
Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 7,490,879 to Seefeldt et al. discloses a pine cone collection tool comprising an elongate tubular body useful for both collection and storage. However, this tubular device still requires collection of one pine cone at a time and greater storage capacity would be desirable. As a result, a need still exists for a pine cone gathering device that is inexpensive to manufacture and has increased efficiency.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,460,249 to Cecil Holt, Jr. provides a nut harvesting device to provide a chamber for collection of nuts that is partially constructed by several related steps to the present invention. Holt does not provide a means for collecting pine cones without damaging the pine cones or having them hang within the wires of the chamber previously though, and Holt does not previously teach a device having efficient and significant storage for collection of a significant plurality of pine cones.